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Thread: EV range beyond five stops...

  1. #11

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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    Quote Originally Posted by timparkin View Post
    You should get about 19 stops of response out of Portra 400 if you include the toe and shoulder.. It handles about 12 stops quite gracefully.
    That said, print and display media don't do much more than some three to eight stops, and unless you show transparencies, more often the former than the latter. It is not really wise to exploit negative film to the hilt, or you'll have to squash the contrast for printing, and the print will resemble HDR of the ugly kind. In extreme contrast conditions, judicious use of reflectors or flash for exposure may deliver the better end result...

  2. #12
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    Nineteen stops with Porta? That's simply nuts. Guess you mean, if including "unusable" toe
    and shoulder. Likewise, Velvia shows some sublte shadow gradation way down if you have
    a stong enough light behind it, but it's nearly impossible to retrieve.

  3. #13
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    Quote Originally Posted by Sevo View Post
    It is not really wise to exploit negative film to the hilt, or you'll have to squash the contrast for printing, and the print will resemble HDR of the ugly kind. In extreme contrast conditions, judicious use of reflectors or flash for exposure may deliver the better end result...
    I don't really agree with this. It's all about how you do the squashing. Traditional color materials don't give you a lot of easy flexibility, but with black and white or with digital color printing you have enormous control. You can compress parts of the tonal range that don't matter, and leave good separation in the parts that do. It's all about how you map your negative / digital file to the final media.

    Black and white photographers have been making vibrant prints from scenes that wildly exceed the brightness range papers, for well over a hundred years. But it's only possible if you capture enough of that dynamic range to begin with.

  4. #14
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    You can reconfigure the curves in PS, but something else is going to give at the extreme
    ends, or buckle in the middle, and color is going to go off somwhere. Scanning and PS can't
    turn a film into something it never was in the first place.

  5. #15

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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    One very practical example of the flexibility of film is the lowly disposable camera.

    800 iso C41 film, no camera adjustments. Just go shoot, develop normally, and adjust for printing with enlarger or PS. Works great.

    C41 films have very long straight line portions to work with. It doesn't worry me a bit to shoot 3-4 stops over meter reading to get a shot at F/4 or F/2. I do try to avoid that much extra exposure when I can but IMO, if your paying attention at least a little, you really have to be trying over cook C41 films past usability.

    For the range the OP is considering C41 and RA will hardly break a sweat.
    You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

  6. #16
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    Wide latitude color neg films reproduce colors much different than chromes. And an 800
    speed amateur neg film might not look much at all like even a slower speed pro neg film
    properly exposed. There's no free ride. Every time someone tells me they can get away
    with this or that, and then post-correct it in PS, it still looks like "pink slime" to me. Pick
    a film appropriate for the true contrast range and correctly expose it, and if necessary,
    correctly filter for color temp. But these new Portra films are pretty amazing.

  7. #17

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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    I agree that there's no free ride but even Kodak's brochures, at least the last ones I saw, advertise a latitude of -2 to +3 with normal color.

    I will say that I believe they assume a normal scene that will straight print on RA paper. If you are trying to shoot a landscape and will be burning and dodging a bunch sure the rules change.

    Again though, for what the OP is asking for, I think there will be minimal burn and dodge and well within any C41 film's latitude.
    You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

  8. #18
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    Once in awhile I wing it with guesstimated exposure and "latitude" when shooting a street
    Nikon with an appropriate black and white film like Delta 3200. But really, latitude is a very
    bad concept and even a worse habit. Something inevitably gives. With chromes you just
    chop off one of the extremes. With color neg, you run the risk of dropping some part of the
    gamut into some arena where it can't be adequately resolved per hue distinctions. Hence
    mud (unless you deliberately want that). Might be an OK technique for Aunt Maud's snapshots of the Hairspray Museum in Des Moines, but anyone serious should be exposing
    negs with just as much care as chromes if they want optimum results.

  9. #19

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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    What I truly enjoy about the latitude of negative films like Portra or whatever is that I can carefully peg my exposure and know that I will have plenty of info to work the print around the edges.

    I am by no means advocating poor camera work, IMO when one has the opportunity to properly set the camera, one should.

    That said my shutters and lenses don't always give me the settings I might prefer, some of my lenses don't have shutters or aperture control.

    In these cases, lots of latitude is very welcome.
    You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

  10. #20
    Landscape Addict
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    Re: EV range beyond five stops...

    I shoot Portra 400 rated at 100 and get great results.. Thus proving its range.. Even outdoor landscapes at the coast, 2 stops over the meter reading, Crashing waves and clouds in the sky still hold detail while there are absolutely no dark areas in the image. Portra films are awesome.

    I can recommend Kodak Ektar 100 too... Very forgiving.. I accidently underexposed my last roll (had my meter set at ISO400). When i got my roll back from the lab it was a little dark but still quite usable.

    Velvia 100, 50 & provia are among the hardest films to get perfect. Once you get the hang of it you can squeeze a lot more out of velvia than what people say... Suffice to say, Velvia 50 is likely the single reason drum scanners were invented. On the light table, an area that looks black when you hold the slide up to light will show detail, sometimes, very good detail and colour is in there.. It just LOOKS dark... A drum scanner and a good operator can get those colours and detail out !
    Chamonix 045N-2 - 65/5.6 - 90/8 - 210/5.6 - Fomapan 100 & T-Max 100 in Rodinal
    Alexartphotography

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